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Summary

In the past fifty years the narratives of many popular Asian American texts have been dominated by economic questions-what money can buy, how money is lost, how money is circulated, and what labour or objects are worth. Focusing on texts that have achieved mainstream popularity,Economic Citizensshows that while Asian Americans have been disenfranchised from the larger national body-in fact prohibited from circulation-Asian American texts that emphasize economic and social exchange circulate widely. In contrast to readings of Asian American literature as a story of alienation or assimilation, this book argues that the narrative of economic circulation highlights the contradictions of Asian American visibility in the United States. Although Asians have been traditionally imagined as the threat of capitalism gone awry,Economic Citizensdemonstrates that the logic of economic exchange has been an overlooked but critical means for Asian Americans to negotiate political and cultural equivalence

Author Biography

Christine So is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

p. ix

Introduction

p. 1

The Promise of Exchange: Production, Circulation, and Consumption within Chinatown Ethnographies

p. 37

The Universality of Exchange: Japanese American Travel Narratives and the Emergence of the Global Citizen

p. 71

The Embodiment of Exchange: Asian Mail-Order Brides, the Threat of Global Capitalism, and the Rescue of the U.S. Nation-State

p. 99

The Logic of Exchange: Ordering the Chaos of Twentieth-Century Chinese Women's History